The business world constantly experiences dynamic changes in consumer demands. The strategies that worked yesterday may not work today, and sticking to them could be detrimental if you intend to stay ahead of the competition.
With rival businesses springing up on a daily basis, changing your tactics, hiring smarter employees, improving your customer service, treating your employees better, and more, is crucial to staying relevant in your market segment.
If you intend to remain a key player in your industry many years down the line, here are 7 ways to always stay ahead of the competition:
1). Have A Great Knowledge Of Your Competitors:
Knowing who your competitors are, their key strengths, their weaknesses, and their Unique Selling Points (USP) is crucial to understanding exactly how to manoeuvre them, steal a bulk of their customers, and remain relevant in the industry.
A good understanding of your competitors will help you stay ahead of their every move, anticipate their every actions, and understand how they can, and will hurt you.
Having this knowledge will help you stay ahead of the competition every step of the way.
2). Learn More About Your Customers Faster & Better Than Anyone Else:
Customers can, and will get unpredictable sometimes. With changes in economic situations happening on the fly, customer decisions and expectations equally fluctuate.
Closely monitoring your customers actions by getting feedback a while after you deliver a product or service to them, watching what else is getting their attention, and studying the type of remarks (positive or negative) they make about your business or other competing businesses, will help you stay up-to-date on their current and future needs.
By finding out whether low prices, latest trends, and more, drive customers interests in the market, you can better adjust your strategies to convert more prospects to brand loyalists.
3). Constantly Update Your Products To Meet Current Trends:
There’s a reason motor car companies release newer models of their vehicles every year. The same applies to mobile phone manufacturers, clothing brands, computer manufacturers, and more. The primary reason is, most people unconsciously want to be seen using the latest version of most things.
The acquisition increases their perceived social status, and gets more people to not just like their personality and style, but to also want to know them personally.
Constantly updating your products will help you stay ahead of the competition, by taking advantage of the social needs of people to always want to be envied and respected.
4). Surprise Your Customers Periodically:
Have you ever called your customers to wish them a happy birthday? How about a call just to say hello?
The little surprising things you do to your customers are sometimes more valuable than offering them a cash discount. Knowing any other business can offer them a mouth-watery discount, makes them value a similar one as regular or lesser.
A call, a surprise visit from the CEO for e.g being the largest purchasing customer in the month, and more, can build brand loyalty among your customers, and drive them to talk about your business to many more people that may need your products or services.
Sometimes, the little things you ignore, matter a lot more than the magnificent things you’ve planned out for your customers. Doing them consistently with little to no monetary attachments will ensure you build an emotional bond and partially stay ahead of the competition in terms of great customer relationships.
5). Make Your Employees Feel Like Family:
Before you take care of your customers, you must first take care of your employees. They are the people who interface with your customers, respond to their issues and try to ensure they’re solved, while you play a managerial and strategic role.
You can make your employees know you value them like family by organising office hangouts, paying them better, giving them the power to make some independent decisions, serving them lunch, offering a great health care package, and more.
These little things would make them put in more effort than they normally would have, and do anything to see you succeed.
6). Step Up Your Marketing:
What marketing strategies have your competitors failed to explore? Where are some customers hanging out that no one knows yet about? What markets have other rivals failed to explore?
By stepping up your marketing strategies and expanding to newer markets, your brand exposure and growth can always stay ahead of the competition.
7). Estimate & Plan Further Into The Future:
Speculating future events is crucial to successfully positioning your business in the market; both for the short and long term. By planning into the future, you position your business for growth, take advantage of opportunities as they arise, follow consumer trends, invest in new technologies, and thereby stay ahead of the competition every step of the way.
Having a clear idea of where you intend your business to be in the next 5 to 10 years will determine how far you’ll scale, and how much of the market you’d be able to convert to brand loyalists.
After all is said and done, “may the best man or woman win”.